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Third Generation
8. Eliza
Jane ACKLEY was born on 26 Apr 1823 in Barrs Mill, Washington , Pennsylvania.6,7,35 She died on 22 May 1901 in Allegheny
, Pennsylvania.7,35,36 Eliza
Jane ACKLEY and William WALKER were married about 1847 in Allegheny , Pennsylvania.7,35,36 William
WALKER (son of Living and Living) was born on 24 Apr 1806 in Haddington,
East Lothian, Scotland.35,36 He died on 9 Apr 1883 in Allegheny, Allegheny , Pennsylvania.35,36
Western Ave. He appeared in the following News Article from the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette ( on 7 Mar 2005 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny , Pennsylvania
Every family's story is worth telling, but not every family can afford to commission
a family biography from a published author.
Then again, not every family has as interesting a story to tell as the Walkers,
whose name has long been associated with Harbison-Walker Refractories Co., but
whose entire business history is older, broader and more obscure, dating to 1837
and encompassing candle and soap making, pork packing, pig iron manufacturing,
glass making, distilling and other enterprises, including early communication
technologies.
In "Keep Tryst: The Walkers of Pittsburgh and the Sewickley Valley,"
Stephen Neal Dennis reveals an often tumultuous business history and more, documenting
the social history and houses of the Walker family, which in the 19th and early
20th centuries built several of the region's most architecturally significant
dwellings.
Dennis, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, has written about the houses before, in his
1996 book, "Historic Houses of the Sewickley Valley," and Margaret
Henderson Floyd has covered several in her 1994 book about the Longfellow, Alden
and Harlow firm, "Architecture After Richardson."
What "Keep Tryst" provides is a broader family context for their creation
and an understanding of where the money came from to build them.
Dennis begins his tale in the East Lothian region of Scotland, about 20 miles
west of Edinburgh, in the village of Athelstaneford and the town of Haddington,
home to the Walker and Hepburn families, which united with the marriage of John
Walker and Marien Hepburn in 1726. Their grandson, also named John Walker, married
another Hepburn, this one called Margaret. They were the parents of eight children,
including two sons who immigrated in the early 1830s and began the American branches
of the family tree.
The book's title is the Hepburn family motto in Scotland; to keep tryst is to
keep one's engagements or appointments and, by extension, one's obligations.
In Scotland, the Hepburns and Walkers seem to have been farmers, butchers and
small landowners. William Walker, the older of the two immigrating sons, came
with three cousins on the ship Frances in 1831. Dennis doesn't know or speculate
why they came to Pittsburgh, where many Scots and Scotch-Irish had settled, but
once here William went to work for a butcher and in time married his daughter,
Eliza Ackley.
In 1833, William's younger brother Hay joined him and began working in a soap-
and candle-making business owned by an old Scotsman named John Gibb. When Gibb
died without heirs, the Walker brothers continued the business under the name
W. & H. Walker on Third Street in Allegheny City.
In 1850, the Walker brothers, their wives and children were living near their
business, but by 1856 they had begun plotting the first of two family moves that
would distance them farther and farther from an increasingly acrid urban environment.
They purchased a little more than nine acres in what is now Brighton Heights,
where they eventually would own 23 acres and build two large houses, one of which,
"Bonny Blink," survives today on Morrell Street.
A history of the Harbison-Walker Refractories Co. described the brothers as "shrewd,
cautious, hard workers," and Hay Walker as "a great reader" who
owned an extensive library.
In 1875, Hay bought into the Star Fire Brick Co., and it was renamed Harbison
and Walker. In time the firm would own 27 plants in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky,
supplying not only refractory brick for iron and steel furnaces but also face
brick for construction.
The firm's Pompeian brick -- longer and narrower than regular brick -- was used
to clad the James and Elizabeth Walker Pontefract house on Lincoln Avenue, which
survives in a diminished state next to a McDonald's in Allegheny West.
William and Eliza had four daughters and a son; Hay and his wife Jeanett had
five sons and three daughters, and it was their boys who went into the family
business. They expanded the W. & H. Walker soap and candle enterprise to
produce food and pharmaceutical products, toiletries, cleaning supplies, fertilizer
and much, much more on Herr's Island, using byproducts from the nearby slaughterhouses.
The large Walker plant was housed in about a dozen brick buildings on 15 acres
on the eastern end of the island, where the former railroad bridge over the back
channel is today.
Dennis doesn't shy from reporting the poor working conditions of employees, many
of whom were women, as recorded in the 1907-1908 published study by Elizabeth
Beardsley Butler. She cited "the fine flying particles in the powder packing
rooms, the buildings actually dirty and in the direct path of the wind that blows
through the stockyards."
Around the turn of the 20th century, the Walkers began a second out-migration,
this time to Sewickley and environs, where the family built, purchased or rented
eight houses, and where the second William Walker worked to preserve its rural,
residential character.
A full chapter is devoted to "Muottas," its eight-decade occupation
by the Walkers, its three-year vacancy and vandalism and its careful restoration,
since 1989, by Harlan and Cindy Giles. But why not include some mention of the
romantic origin of the unusual name? Cindy Giles told me several years ago it
had a double meaning to William Walker and his wife Jane -- as a village in Switzerland
they had visited on their honeymoon and as an old High German word meaning "U-shaped
hillside," which described the landscape around their house.
Hay Walker Jr. lived to be 97 and in his old age enjoyed talking about the ups
and downs of his business career, in which he is said to have lost three fortunes
and made four, dying a wealthy man.
To craft his story, Dennis drew from personal letters; interviews with family
members and others; corporate, court and real estate records and more, including
an earlier history of the related Proudfit family, as well as Susan Cooper Walker's
charming memoir, "When I Look Back and Think," and John Walker's 1974
"Self-Portrait With Donors: Confessions of an Art Collector." The most
widely known of the family's progeny, Walker was director of the National Gallery
of Art from 1956 to 1969.
There is no bibliography, but the book is heavily footnoted. There, as always,
some of the most interesting and arcane details can be found. Its 373 pages are
bountifully illustrated with family photographs and memorabilia from Walker businesses.
"Keep Tryst" can be repetitious (perhaps to accommodate chapter reading
over cover-to-cover) and hard to follow, as it jumps back and forth in time and
tracks the activities of several generations of John Walkers, William Walkers
and Hay Walkers. And while the book was painstakingly researched, it would have
benefited from closer editing.
Sometimes Dennis contradicts himself even within a few pages, as when he writes
that Hay Walker arrived in America a year or two after William on page 2, and
on page 3 writes that both came over in 1831. He reports "all of the Walkers"
were living in what is now Allegheny West in 1900, but a few pages later notes
that William Walker was still residing at "Bonny Blink." And there
were and are no dormers on "Bonny Blink," despite what Dennis writes.
Although "Keep Tryst" is privately published, limited copies are available
for $40 at Penguin Book Shop, 420 Beaver St., and the Sewickley Valley Historical
Society, 200 Broad St., both in Sewickley.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation is working with a distributor to
place copies in Pittsburgh bookstores, but in the meantime, the book is available
directly from Landmarks; call Frank Stroker at 412-471-5808 or e-mail him at
frank@phlf.org.
Like "Thomas Mellon and His Times," "Keep Tryst" has resonance
beyond its immediate family and is highly recommended for any library devoted
to Western Pennsylvania history -- or for those simply wanting to know more about
Allegheny City and Pittsburgh's hidden past
Eliza Jane ACKLEY and William WALKER had the following children:
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